


Border Lines

by PeonyBlack



Category: Original Work
Genre: Prisoner; Slavery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-28
Updated: 2018-06-28
Packaged: 2019-05-29 19:51:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15080495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PeonyBlack/pseuds/PeonyBlack
Summary: Among friends and enemies and all things grey, he will take this fort





	Border Lines

No one lasted in The Eastern Plains.

When he was offered the mission, Jorgen was told so. People warned him, his few friends, the men he served with, and the men that had served under him during his previous assignments. His General passed on the orders, but told him he was free to decline. He could certainly do better for his first command. He was young, had a future ahead of him, perhaps even a nice girl waiting. There were plenty, lesser men that could take it instead, without wasting their lives away. No one would judge him, or hold it against him if he said no.

He went along and accepted it. He was Commander Jorgen Debrien, a soldier of the Republic, and honour prevented him from declining any assignment. Besides, the General was wrong: there was no one waiting for him.

He arrived at Ghoulwhir early in the winter, and it did not take him long to realize he had been told the truth.

The fort was nothing but rocks huddled together roughly, hanging over the cliff. The men that guarded it were outcasts, deserters and thieves, expelled here, at the edge of civilization. The last commanding officer, a small noble from Hardigen, had used all his connections to get a transfer. The valley below, bordered by a small chain of mountains, was uncharted land. In the few villages scattered around the fort, where people lived under the constant menace of the tribes, there was talk of beasts and unclean spirits that put on the skin of men and walked the earth at night.

Jorgen dismissed it all for superstition. He did not believe there were spirits lurking in the fog which only deepened as snow delayed. Enemies, yes, savages of the plains, but people nonetheless – though ultimately, it mattered little what any of them believed. They were soldiers of the Republic, sent here to serve and protect, and Jorgen intended to get the job done.

Every day, the mist rose. It concealed the fort from whatever is was out there, same as it concealed whatever was out there from them. It made the men uneasy. Jorgen knew they drank when they came off duty. He'd been angry when he first found out, dealt punishments – isolation, mostly, and cutting rations - had threatened to confiscate the wine and throw it over the walls, but did not go as far as to actually search for it.

He was starting to understand.

Winter here was different than the soft, quiet fall of snow back home. The sky was closer to the ground and always bleak, the earth thick and greedy, pools of foul water oozing under his feet, winds howling endlessly in the wilderness.

***  
The boy had long, dark hair, mated with mud and blood, and the pale skin of the tribes. His feet were bare, and his arms tied behind his back. The rough shirt he wore reached his knees, revealing slender calves and long legs. Jorgen suspected he was all skin and bones underneath, but the otherwise shapeless rag was stretched over his shoulders, so maybe the boy wasn't as lithe as he seemed. He wanted to see his face, but the captive stared at the ground, at the dark, muddy pools, kneeling in the very same place where the Sergeant had thrown him, and he hadn't spoken a word.

The guards walking along the walls had seen the fire at night, a play of shadows turned bluish by the mist. They could have ignored it – Jorgen suspected the men would have preferred it that way, but it was across the border, on the Republic’s land, and it was Jorgen’s duty to check. They rode at first light and found the ashes still warm.

They discovered him eventually, had stumbled across the small, animal hole in the ground, and fetched him away, dried blood on his knees, on his face, in his hair, and fresh one on his knuckles and lips from when he'd fought them.

He fought with the unfocused, desperate violence of a thunderstorm which starts out of the clear blue sky and ends just as suddenly. Jorgen had been through many fights before, but never one such as this. It wasn't that children could not fight. He knew all too well that many did, but this boy never stood a chance and he must have been aware of it all along. He looked like he might be six and ten, seven and ten at the most. About the same age as Freia, older than Nicholas would have been - his brothers that had perished to the red fever which pillaged Elemore after the war. Years later, Jorgen still saw their faces in his dreams, although the memory always faded when he was awake.

"What's your business here, boy?"

The local dialect was not much different from that of his homeland. The boy should have understood, but there was no sign that he'd had, no indication that he'd even heard Jorgen at all. The Commander was left to wonder: where the boy came from, what was he running from that was so terrible as to push him on enemy land; what he knew and what he did not – and, above all, how far he was willing to go in order find out.

He closed in on his horse and the animal's nostrils quivered, taking in the foreign scent. Jorgen pulled at the reins as it tossed its head back and whinnied impatiently.

“Go ahead if you want to, sir," the sergeant said. "I’ll finish this.”

“Finish?"

The sergeant patted the hilt of his sword.

“He's either a criminal or a spy."

“He's bound, unarmed and half your size."

“A demon worshiper. Demon spawns all of them, sir," the man said with defiance. “You should've seen what we've seen. They're savages, and this one, sir, he'd rip your heart out if only he could. It's what they do."

The sergeant was called Britto, from Vreer. He ended up here after having assaulted one of his superiors. His back was covered in whip scars, but he did not hide them, and was certainly not ashamed of them. Jorgen was able to read Britto's eyes: detachment. He would slit the boy's throat and not bat an eyelied. The other soldiers respected Britto. They'd grouped behind him, and the look on their faces was one of open approval. Jorgen could not count on these men. They were restless and all looked down on him as a young, inexperienced officer, but currently he did not care about that. He cared not how many times it might had happened before. He had not been sent here to kill children. He steered his horse slowly, stared Britto down.

“I don't care what they do. We're not them. We’re soldiers, and we have honour."

He didn't do anything drastic, like reach for his sword or strike the other man down. He didn't even raise his voice from his normal tone of command, but he was determined that there would be no munity on his watch, not in this men’s army, not even here, at the end of the world, and somehow his determination passed through.

“Your orders, sir?” The sergeant backed down.

He passed them on and made a point out of not supervising the men's compliance. Instead, Jorgen studied the horizon. The sky was clouded and low, but snow won't come today. He was learning to tell the days apart.

"Ready, sir," the sergeant announced. His expression was sour.

The boy was being hauled on his feet, thrown without ceremony on the back of a spare horse. Jorgen turned his around and started on, with one last look at the boy who seemed to have regained some sense of balance despite his bound hands. The side of his face was bruised, his lips broken, and the murky sky looked bright next to his eyes.

***  
The boy glanced at Jorgen and quickly lowered his eyes again. He looked whenever he thought Jorgen might not notice, and cowered away as soon as Jorgen did. But his gaze was a dark, unsettling question, and Jorgen never addressed it, because he still did not have an answer.

The boy had never spoken for all that Jorgen had tried.

On the first day, back to the relative safety of the fort, the captive had been entrusted to Kreis, the blacksmith. He went along, subdued, and Jorgen thought that the cold, the ride and the exhaustion had kicked the fight out of him.

He had emerged a while later, cleaned up, with his long hair shaved off and a purple eye that would soon turn black, clear evidence that Jorgen's initial assumption had been wrong. Kreis had dropped the oversized army shirt, baring the boy's shoulder, and Jorgen studied the tattoo there, a feathered arrow drawn in blue ink that seemed to pierce into his flesh. The rest of him was protruding bones, cuts and bruises and pent-up grudge. There was nothing wrong with his tongue that could have accounted for the muteness. Jorgen searched his face for signs of pain, but there was barely any expression there. Unconcealed by the dark locks, the boy's ashen features were reminiscent of a wax mask, with hallows where the eyes appeared wider and deeper, and always dark.

He stoically endured the examination, lips closed tightly, but when the blacksmith loosened his grip of him, the captive turned his head swiftly and dug his teeth into the man's hand. The soldier backhanded him. The boy lost his balance and reeled back, baring his teeth in a wild snarl. Kreis cursed, calling him beast, and Jorgen took hold of the man's arm as it sprung to hit him again.

"You let your guard down. The fault is yours."

A new, red mark had blossomed on the boy's pale cheek. Jorgen wondered how to go about it. As a commanding officer, he had always preferred encouragement and reasoning to blows or ill treatment, and was reluctant to inflict more pain, given the state of his prisoner. But he also recognized those instances when duress could not be entirely avoided, and this was one of them.

He'd placed his enemy captive in the middle of the room, told him to stand and asked the questions, as was his duty. When the boy failed to answer, Jorgen had instructed him first to reconsider and second, not to move until then.

It had resulted in a battle of wills. Jorgen waited as his young captive stood there, eyes pinned on the wall behind the Commander’s shoulders and the sharp lines of his face set in a strained expression, for more than Jorgen cared to count. Sweat broke through his skin and shivers he could no longer contain shook his body at intervals, but he kept the position until his knees gave up under his weight and he went down, hitting the floor hard. Jorgen gave up also. From what he'd seen thus far, force only made the boy number, more set in his ways. Jorgen had fed him instead, placed a blanket in front of the hearth and then directed the boy to sleep.

He'd found him in the morning, curled in a distant corner. He was awake, staring down at his bare feet. Jorgen had dumped his own muddy boots next to him and pointed at where the food that had been placed on the table the night before.

"Work and earn your keep," he said evenly, "or it’s the inside of a cell."

He returned from morning exercise to find the boots clean.

The boy made a habit out of cleaning them every day, and then moved on to the other tasks that his capturer assigned to him, inside his rooms and later inside the fort. But still he stonewalled. The rest of his time he spent in what Jorgen now thought of as his corner, staring into nothing. He was quiet, always quiet, and all the things left unsaid carried weight, giving Jorgen an unsettling sensation, like being in the same room with a wild animal that is only half tamed.

The Commander's apartment at the fort consisted in a large room serving as bedroom and office and a smaller one serving as entry way, where uniforms, bridles and harnesses were stored. Jorgen kept the boy in the foyer and locked up the door after him at night and whenever he went out during the day.

The first time Jorgen left the door unlocked he returned from his afternoon rounds to find the boy with a bleeding nose, which put him in an impossible situation. The men were making their views on Jorgen's treatment of the boy more than clear, and while he could not punish them over an enemy captive, he should if he wanted to keep his command. He should punish the boy, who had not been told to go outside, also, but he had not been told not to, either, and Jorgen couldn't if he wanted to keep his self-esteem.

His prisoner was seated in his corner, with his head between his knees, wiping at his face with a piece of cloth that was already bloodstained. Jorgen threw a clean one in his direction.

"Lift your head higher than the rest of your body to make it stop, and do not go out again unless I tell you to."

The boy's mistrusting gaze darted to him, and after Jorgen held it and nothing else happened, he did as commanded, seemingly abashed. His silence, however, was defiant enough, and the air had grown suddenly thin, hanging stale and heavy over the room.

Jorgen went and opened the windows. He still didn't know anything about his captive, or why he reminded him of Freia and Nicholas, when clearly there was no semblance between the wild, dark boy and his light-haired, blue-eyed siblings that had not made it after the war. It remained to be seen whether this boy would.

The winter air seized the room. It smelled of mist and smoke, and of roughness to come.

***  
The days were running together into winter. The general frame of mind in the fort was unrest. There was talk at night, around the fire or behind closed doors about how the Commander was breaching the military rules. Britto, the sergeant, had stared in shock the first time the enemy boy had taken away his muddy boots, and made no secret of the fact that he found the whole thing preposterous.

Jorgen expected that the men would slowly adjust and start seeing things his way. It was when the rumour that the Commander was spellbound started to spread through the fort that he realized he had to act. One evening, after dinner in the common hall, he took Britto for a walk on the ramparts and brought the matter up directly.

“Your men go around spreading gossip,” Jorgen said, watching intently for the other’s reactions. “Tell me, Sergeant, why do stand by while they comment against orders?”

“I agree with them, sir. That boy you have walking around the fort – he should be under lock like the beast that he is. Instead, he sleeps by the fire and eats our food, while our bones rot in these bloody lands. One of these days, when you turn your back to him, he’ll strike you down, because he has it in him, or he’ll open the gate for the rest of them. Maker of storms and rough waters!” He cursed, unmindful of the presence of his superior. “He is a demon worshiper, and bears the sign openly! We don’t want any of that here!”

“So you suggest we kill him.”

The sergeant gritted his teeth; his face had turned grim, but he kept silent, staring in front of him, into the mist.

“What do you see, Britto?” Jorgen asked, waving his hand in the direction of the man’s gaze.

The man turned his head to slowly, with a defiant grin.

“Plains and mountain, sir.”

“And beyond?”

“Hautdemont?” He asked in dialect, eyebrows drawing together in surprise. “Over the mountains? Forest and wilderness.”

“Spirits?” In the faint light he sensed more than saw the man grimace. “Enemy tribes?”

“Maybe. No one who’d ventured out there returned to tell the tale.” He was getting nervous, and perhaps dangerous. Jorgen would not survive a fall over the ramparts - no man would. “What do you want me to say, sir?”

“I don’t know,” he spat out. “You tell me. Should we kill them all? Or should we do our job, Sergeant, and keep peace here, so that our people back home could have peace?” He turned on his heels abruptly, not giving the other the time to react. “Tell the men that we ride at midnight. Leave only the guards.”

“At night? Where to?”

“To wherever I say. Am I not your Commander? This, Britto, is my fort. Anyone who fails to see that is free to leave!”

He left the sergeant there, staring into the night, but there was no point to sleep for the few remaining hours. He was about to deal with this mockery of a unit. Other assignments would follow, but this was his first command and what happened here would never be undone.

The charcoals in fireplace had turned to ashes and the cold was biting its way inside when time came. From his corner, the boy stole a furtive glance. Jorgen stormed by and did not bother with him.

They rode at midnight, heading in the direction of the pass, over the border and into Hautdemont. It was cold and smoggy, pale moonlight drowned by the mists. Downhearted soldiers leaned on their horses, passing jugs of wine from hand to hand openly. Jorgen could not entirely dismiss the possibility of a dagger landing in his back. If he did not do this now, he never could.

He started ahead. They marched on narrow forest paths, ascending along the mountain slopes into new, unknown ground, as the fog lay over them unbroken. After a few hours, however, the sky slowly started to clear up and a pale dawn emerged over the mountaintops. The landscape was bare – small pines and short, withered grass, with no one in sight.

The sergeant rode to him.

“Shouldn’t we return, sir?”

Jorgen shook his head firmly.

“Find me one of your demons.”

The men exchanged curses and anxious glances. As they climbed higher, uniform clouds covered the sky. By noon, rain started, cold and diffuse, and so it went on and off most of the day, washing over the men and the horses.

“Ain’t none today. Orders, sir?" A spiteful sense of respect crept into the Sergeant’s voice. It made Jorgen feel generous.

“Head back.”

Bent on the side in his saddle, he gave rope to the horse.

***  
“Permission to report, sir?”

They’d reached the fort at dusk, and the descent into the ever-present mists of Ghoulwhir had been far more pleasant than the departure. Along the way, Britto had passed the jug to him, and Jorgen had chocked on the new, harsh wine. The men burst into laughter. The mood, however, was light, and Jorgen joined in. It had been so long that the sound was strange to his ear. He was starting to remember why.

"What’s wrong, Kreis?”

“Your boy, sir,” the man started cautiously. “I am sorry, sir, we ran into trouble.”

Jorgen jumped from his saddle, more worried than annoyed by the soldier’s hesitation.

“Speak.”

“Maker, sir, I don’t know what happened. He is always so bloody quiet, like a ghost, and when I noticed him he was walking away with my dirty laundry. I figured that’s what he does, but I guess along the way he must have sneaked into the forge and took it.”

Jorgen was losing his patience. “Took what, Kreis?”

The man sighed, doubt and guilt written over his features.

“The bow, sir, and some arrows. When we realized, he was already up on the roof.”

“Curses, man, I told you to keep your eyes open! Where is he now?”

“Still there.” Kreis shifted his weight on his other foot. “You left the door unlocked, sir.”

On second thought, he'd had. Jorgen hurried after him.

The boy sat on the roof of the high tower, feet hanging over the edge. Jorgen gave him an assessing look. The boy did not seem to notice his presence or any of his surroundings. His head was tilted back and he was staring at the sky, but his grip of the bow was even. The wind ruffled his too large shirt, carrying a distant taste of snow. Several arrows lay scattered on the ground in warning.

“Come down!”

Instantly, the boy jumped to attention. He shifted his pose and then moved his bow-arm forward, aimed and released. It was a calculated shot. The arrow - a gracious, deadly bird – landed at Jorgen’s feet. The soldiers backpedalled, bringing up their shields. Jorgen held out a hand to deter them.

“You want to shoot me, is that your plan?” He took a step towards the edge of the tower and another arrow boldly split the air, clipping the hem of his cape.

“Pull back, sir,” Kreis pleaded. “He’s been at this all day!”

Jorgen stubbornly stepped forward.

“So you shoot me,” he shouted in the direction of the roof. “And then what? What do you think will happen? Come down!”

For a moment, the boy stared at him starkly. Next, his sharp features twisted into a wild frown and he lifted his right arm, only to drop it again. Jorgen took a deep breath, watching him closely. Over his head the sky, heavy with clouds, rippled like deep waters.

“Stop it and get down here!” He used his best commanding tone. “I won’t say it again!”

The boy’s feet dangled dangerously over the void and, after remaining an instant undecided, he disappeared from sight. The sound of a slammed door echoed into the tense silence of the yard. Moments later, the captive descended, walked to Jorgen with a sullen expression and hurled the bow at the ground.

“You’re angry?” Jorgen asked evenly. “That makes two of us.”

The boy bent his eyes at his feet. His chest heaved in silent wrath and his fists were resolutely clenched. Sighting, Jorgen gave to cross his arms over his chest, and froze in mid movement when the boy reflexively flinched away.

“You think I’ll hit you?” His question got him a black, slanted glance, and Jorgen tightened his lips and shook his head. “I won’t hit you, and I won’t starve you. I reckon you had enough of that. But I won’t tolerate it either. Pick up that bow and give it back to Kreis – properly .”

He waited tensely for the boy to comply, which he did, as resentful and silent as possible, handing the bow to the shocked blacksmith. Jorgen let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding. The boy might have disobeyed, and then he would have lost face with the men. It only then occurred to him. He'd gone with his instinct, but the truth was he'd been in the dark.

“Isolation,” Jorgen ruled. He did not set a term. They all needed time to think.

That night, Jorgen slept like a rock, overcome with fatigue, and woke up in the morning with a sense of mental and physical exaltation. The military life to which he had been destined since childhood revolved around the concepts of discipline, fairness and trust. The harsh realities of life on the border, with the constant struggle to push back the tribes into the empty plains had not weakened his beliefs. He'd had them confirmed once more, by taking a leap of faith.

He performed his morning routine effectively, and even wrote down a report for his superiors in Aselone. His senses were so alert he thought he could hear the silence – which reminded him of the boy, and of the nasty tear in his winter cape. Decisions had to be made, but not today. Elders from the villages arrived before noon, asking to see the new Commander.

The Peace of Winter was approaching, and Winter Markets had been open in the border villages. The few allied tribes and even some of the wild ones partake in the trade. Incidents, often severe, occurred every year. Jorgen was to police the markets if he wanted peace. He divided the soldiers into groups, allocated them and rode himself, moving from one village to another to supervise his men.

The assignment was tedious, going in circles through the mayhem of the markets, where the villagers exchanged smoked meat and cheeses, flour and iron tools or the local dry wine for furs or game, dried forest fruits or sharp yew arrows. He supervised the tribesmen, looking not only to prevent trouble, but for what useful piece of information he might get. A few days into observing the customs of the tribes Jorgen had another revelation. He’d had a hard time understanding why the women of the tribes always walked with their eyes on the ground, or why the children were skinny and dirty and left to cry unattended, until he realized that trade of another kind also occurred on the borderline.

“You knew, Britto?”

“Not much can be done about it, sir,” was the Sergeant’s reply. “It’s their custom. Life here is hard enough as it is, and it’s cheap labour, sir, so our people buy it. Why? I mean, you did keep the boy.”

“As a prisoner,” Jorgen clarified.

“He sure don't see it that way.”

“Wasn’t he supposed to be a demon, Britto?” Jorgen asked, surprised by the man’s accusing tone.

The sergeant shrugged. “He must have some demon blood for shooting that bow the way he does, sir, but I reckon he's just a boy, after all.”

***  
The first thing he did back at the fort was to order the release of the captive. He had been under lock for over a week, and while Jorgen deemed that more than enough, he had found it an easier way to deal with him in the middle of all the excitement. Besides which, the boy was good at keeping to himself. That thought, however, was not as reassuring anymore. He was starting to understand.

The boy stood in the middle of the room, maintaining his neutral expression under Jorgen’s careful scrutiny.

“You’re a runaway from the villages,” Jorgen said. Shame made him sound harsher than he meant, and panic shone in the boy's eyes, confirming his suspicions.

“It’s all right,” he hurried to reassure him. “I’m not sending you back.”

The boy wrapped his arms around his chest like a shield and glanced darkly at him.

“I mean it,” Jorgen said. A bitter feeling had replaced the elation which he’d felt on that day. The Eastern Plains were a terrible land, populated by wild tribesmen, but this boy had arrived here, feral and bruised and starved, on account of his own people. And the boy did not trust him. After his failed attempt at freedom, he’d done what he thought he had to do, obeying his captors in order to survive. Knowing what he knew now, Jorgen couldn’t blame him.

“I have not been exactly fair to you. I brought you here to keep us all safe, but after that. I should have explained. You don't have to stay, you know. I could take you into the Plains or into Hautdemont.”

Quickly, the boy shook his head with such vehemence that it made Jorgen dizzy.

“No?” He was confused, but then the memory of what he’d witnessed in the markets came to him. “Was it the same in the Plains?”

The boy raised his eyes, but instead of looking at the Commander, he looked through him, as though he was not even there. As far as confirmation went, Jorgen should not expect anything more.

“I really wish you’d talk to me,” he sighed, disarmed. “I don’t even know your name.”

The boy opened his mouth and clamped it shot again, undecided. For some minutes, he brooded over it, and then suddenly said in dialect,

“Ivo.” He sounded uncompromisingly annoyed.

“Archer?” Jorgen asked puzzled and the boy shrugged, chewing on his lower lip. Archer, then. Chances were it wasn’t his real name, assuming he had one, but it was still better than thinking of him as ‘the boy’.

“All right, Ivo. But if you stay here, you still have to do what I say, same as everyone else. I’m not sure you understand how that’s different.”

The boy hesitated.

“You won’t hit me or starve me, sir.” It was not exactly a statement and the dark eyes were still heavy with suspicion.

“No,” Jorgen asserted. "I won't." It was not what he hoped to hear, but same as the name, it would have to do. Perhaps later, when he'd be a better officer and a better man, things might change.

“Seek Britto,” he said gently. “He confiscated some clothes from the market. I believe they’re meant for you.”

After Ivo left soberly, Jorgen opened the windows. The cold air was easier to breathe. This was hardly victory, but it wasn't defeat, either. Peace was something that never lasted, but the fighting had ended for now. This fort was not home, but it was his.

Outside, the mist had started to clear and snow fell immaculate from the darker side of heaven.


End file.
